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Yesterday’s CLAT aspirants in a tizzy over difficulty, strange underlines

Post-CLAT hangover
Post-CLAT hangover

The Common Law Admissions Test (CLAT) for 23,875 candidates, has provoked complaints about the unexpected length, difficulty and that a number of answers had been unintentionally underlined in some papers.

According to students on a number of CLAT preparation websites and Facebook pages, the 2011 CLAT was of much higher difficulty than the mock exam preparations they had taken and in some sets of papers around five answers to questions were underlined.

“how could they do this to us. i feel like a betrayed lover,” wrote one CLAT taker on the closed Facebook page of a coaching institute.

Another wrote on CLATGyan: “i m just unable to believe dis….my life is ruined…..wat the helll was dis paper? suchh a lengthy paper..even IITs n PMTs have an easier n brief paper…english n legal were sooooooooo lengthy […] i was not even able to cumplete 160 questions…..my goooddness…” (sic)

However, another candidate noted: “Okay people I know this is late. Yes the paper was bad, but it was bad for everyone, its frivolous to think about suing CLAT people. They just framed the questions in a different way. I t was difficult for me, it was difficult for everyone. Its all relative, so why worry.Lets hope for the best.”

In respect of five questions that were reportedly underlined in some papers, students argued about whether it would be fairer to award five additional points to everyone or dropping those points from the test altogether. Wrote one: “there was ambiguity , and there was plenty of it, giving 5 marks and not giving 5 marks, both will have its own arguements, its like one of those life saving questions they asked in legal reasoning, just that now its become a real life incident, need to wait and watch what the intellectuals at nujs are going to to, I'm sure they have their hands full of issues !”

CLAThacker predicted only 125 to 135 marks out of 200 as expected cut-offs for getting into the top three colleges.

“I was expecting a correct paper but it was not. The students also criticize sometimes unnecessarily but i am also not happy with this paper since it will not be able to sort out the best talent. The luck factor will prevail,” wrote Clathacker. “There is no problem is setting tougher questions but the amount of time should be appropriate otherwise the luck factor comes. The legal reasoning was very good and the reasoning too. Maths, English and GK was also good. The questions were appropriate but the questions were too many and very lengthy. It makes no sense to give 1 mark to a gk question and 1 mark to a legal reasoning question too.”

Another student wrote on Facebook: “This was the best CLAT paper ever by any standards except the underlined answers. Now, relax, have fun and wait for the 28th.”

The results will be announced on 28 May.

NUJS Kolkata’s CLAT convenors were unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

DNA reported that 23,875 students took the CLAT this year.

Picture by umjanedoan

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